Author David Larter

Well, it’s certainly not a service offered at the ship’s barber shop. Eager to maintain the command’s high grooming standards during its stay in Brisbane, Australia, sailors flocked to a local barber shop where the hair dressers were a tad under-dressed. Jasmine Robson, owner and director of Barber Babes in downtown Brisbane, opened the topless hair cuttery in 2013 as part of her adult entertainment complex Grosvenor on George. When the aircraft carrier George Washington visited in 2013, her business was inundated with sailors looking for a haircut with a view, and she wasn’t prepared. “When the last carrier visited,…

The Navy and Marines, along with Finnish, Swedish and British forces stormed Sweden’s beach with a big amphibious landing near Ravlunda. The huge show of force for the blue-green NATO team, shown in the sweet 4-minute video above, was part of the ongoing BALTOPS exercise, an annual military training event put on by NATO. This year’s BALTOPS comes amid heavy tensions with Russia over its incursions into eastern Ukraine and its annexation of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014. Over the weekend, Polish officials announced that the U.S. Army was getting ready to move heavy weaponry to Poland, though it did not specify what kinds of weapons…

For Navy Times, the allegations that CNO nominee Adm. John Richardson and Rear Adm. Joseph Tofalo, head of the Pentagon’s Undersea Warfare shop, violated the 1913 Anti-Lobbying Act triggered a crash-course in arcane lobbying rules that almost everybody in Washington has seemingly figured out how to circumvent. The Project on Government Oversight, the watchdog group that threw the penalty flag on Richardson, claimed the admirals were coordinating a grassroots campaign to fund the $80 billion Ohio-class submarine replacement program. Richardson implored the crowd at October’s meeting of the Naval Submarine League to tell everyone from the local parent-teacher association to their congressman…

Incoming U.S. Pacific Command head Adm. Harry Harris slammed China’s claims in the South China Sea as “outrageous” and “preposterous” in a recent TIME Magazine interview. China has established a pattern of deliberately provocative actions in recent months and has been unclear about its claims to vast swathes of the South China Sea, Harris said, accusing China of destabilizing the region. “I have been critical of China for a pattern of provocative actions that they’ve begun in the recent past. Like unilaterally declaring an air-defense identification zone over the East China Sea, parking a mobile oil platform off the Vietnam…

#USSJasonDunham's flight deck crew prepares an MH-60R Seahawk helicopter, assigned to “Grandmasters” of Helicopter Maritime Strike Squadron 46 for take off. You can help this video take off by clicking the share button.

The flight deck on a surface combatant is a dangerous, fast-paced and loud environment, but it’s also exhilarating. Sailors deployed around the world conduct hundreds of hours of flight hours each day, performing search and rescue, surveillance and resupply missions among others. This morning, Naval Forces Europe posted a GoPro video on its Facebook page of the chock and chain crew on board the destroyer Jason Dunham clearing an MH-60 for takeoff. If you have a case of the Mondays and need some motivations, put your headphones on and crank the volume for this bad-ass video. Green deck.

The Big Stick hit the shores of merry old England last week. The presence of the 100,000-ton carrier Theodore Roosevelt, on an eight-month deployment, created huge Buzz in Great Britain when it anchored off Portsmouth March 22 for a five-day port visit along with the destroyer Winston S. Churchill. The British papers went bananas, spectators lined the shores to catch a glimpse of the 1,100-foot-long warship and businesses hung American flags to welcome 5,000 sailors to the land of America’s one-time imperial overlords. Portsmouth’s local paper, The News, reported that the Roosevelt “stunned onlookers on Southsea seafront as she dwarfed…

ABOARD THE DESTROYER ROSS — Crewmembers are getting ready to head across the ocean for a homeport shift to Rota, Spain, and everyone has something they want to bring with them. The ship left Norfolk on Tuesday but before they did, sailors found nooks and fan rooms to stow personal items to bring to the Old World with them. Most of the ship’s tight spaces seem to be taken up by bikes. Word has is it that both the executive officer and the commanding officer stashed bikes on board. A couple of the officers were trying to rearrange tiny staterooms…

American adults overwhelmingly consider the Marine Corps the “most prestigious” service, according to a Gallup poll released Friday. What about the Navy, you ask? Of the four Defense Department services, It came in dead last. Whatever, America, if you want think the Marine Corps is distinguished service, go right ahead. (You’re welcome for the Osama bin Laden thing, by the way. You know that was a Navy SEAL team, right?) While the rest of the services are receding back into garrison or desperately seeking ways to get on ships, nothing will change for the Navy. It will still be forward. Sailors will still be working…

Adm. Bill McRaven is a bad-ass — and fount of good advice. Head of the Joint U.S. Special Operations Command, he is a 36-year SEAL who has been at the tip of the spear in the war on terror since 2001. He has commanded a squadron in the fabled Naval Special Warfare Development Group, better known as SEAL Team Six, and he oversaw planning and execution of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. He is also the most mysterious and guarded Navy four-star. While Admirals Greenert, Gortney, Locklear and company frequently appear in the media and before Congress, McRaven shies…

If you’ve spent any time in an enlisted berth — outside of gilded officer country — then you know it’s kind of a dive. This despite the XO’s best efforts. For sailors, it’s really the little things that matter: A TV that works, working showers, a working berthing iron that isn’t caked with burnt starch and an ironing board that doesn’t look like somebody was body-slammed onto it (even though somebody was probably body-slammed onto it). Now a company has come up with another gadget to make berthing life better: a re-invented rack light. Lighting company Energy Focus removed the…